The Daily Telegraph report that Victorian police are conducting an Australian-first trial training sniffer dogs to detect GHB. The recent decline in the purity of ecstasy is behind the growing popularity of GHB – also known as “liquid ecstasy” or Grievous Bodily Harm – say police. It’s reported that drug users are combating the heavy police presence at events by sneaking the odourless liquid inside fish-shaped soy sauce containers.

Oliver Markovski, from Victoria Police’s Drug and Alcohol Strategy Unit, has spent the past 12 months researching the “emerging problem” of GHB, and said while it had a small market the risk of overdose was much higher than for other drugs. Users needed only about 2ml of the liquid drug for a hit, which is typically added to a water bottle and sipped through the night. Mr Markovski said Passive Alert Detection Dogs had traditionally not been trained to pick up the drug, which had been used in the nightclub scene since the 1980s, because of safety issues with the dogs and the prevalence of chemicals used to make the drug.

The two chemicals used to make GHB – Gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) and 1,4-Butanediol (1,4 BD) – are industrial cleaners. “But once taken into the body, they convert to GHB and there is a massive risk of overdose,” Mr Markovski said. The crackdown came as Australia and New Zealand police commissioners stated at a three-day conference in Melbourne recently that they could not afford to drop the ball on illicit drugs, while they poured resources into reducing alcohol-related violence.

Victorian Police Commissioner Simon Overland told the hundreds of police and health professionals at the Australasian Drug Strategy Conference that alcohol remained the “key drug of challenge” for his force. But Mr Overland said more research was needed to keep tabs on emerging drug problems. “One of the biggest things for me to come out of this conference is the growth in pharmaceuticals,” he said. “I think we need to know more, how they interplay with other illicit drugs and the impact that has on road safety.

Between January and June last year, there were 239 ambulance call-outs for GHB across Victoria.